Blog:

Context: Don’t Just Work. Do Your Best Work.

There’s a huge difference between doing work and doing great work. Everyone knows that this distinction exists, but most productivity tools seem ambivalent to it. Not us.

We believe that Evernote has a critical role to play in not only helping you get through your projects, but also in adding depth and quality to your work. This is a big challenge, and one that our Augmented Intelligence team has been tackling for the past several years. The result is Context, and it’s here to help you do your best work yet.

Context

As you write or collect information in Evernote, we begin looking for useful, relevant content that will inform your work. This may come from notes in your own account, notes shared by a coworker, and now from trusted news sources, including The Wall Street Journal.

Say you’re preparing for a meeting with a new partner. You start building out a note with agenda items, research, and ideas. Last week, there were important developments in your partner’s industry. The Wall Street Journal covered it. We’ll show it to you right below your note. You can even save or cite the article.

With Context, you’ll have the information you need at the exact moment that you need it, all without you ever leaving your workspace.

There’s more. If you include the name of the person you’re meeting with in your note, and you’re connected to that person on LinkedIn, you’ll see their LinkedIn profile pop up in the Context section. Great for staying up-to-date.

For Your Benefit Only
Your privacy is at the core of Context. We do not share any information about you or your account with any publisher. All of our augmented intelligence is performed within the Evernote service. The links we use when sending you to a publisher’s content do not contain any identifiable information. Like we say in our 3 Laws of Data Protection: your data is protected.

Special Wall Street Journal Offer

All Wall Street Journal subscribers that are eligible for a WSJ+ membership can enjoy a year of Evernote Premium with their subscription. Redeem by logging into your WSJ account.

Available Now

Context is a Premium feature and is available today on Mac, iPhone and iPad. Upgrade your account now to see Context in action. If you installed Evernote from the Mac App Store, then your update is coming very soon. Windows and Android are coming soon after. Evernote Business subscribers will also see shared notes from coworkers in Context.

We’re incredibly excited about the potential of Context to shift our expectations of what software can help us achieve. It’s time for technology to not only speed us up, but to lift us as well.

So far I think Context is pretty cool. Once thing I’m not getting is that in the EC demo and in the video, when the user clicks on a Context article it opens in a new Evernote window. From there they have the ability ti clip citations. When I click a link it simply opens in my regular browser.

Alex Krasny—

Yes, I second the comment of Luis. In the video the person opens the context in Evernote and has a copy citation option. That is not the functionality present, although it certainly seems nice.

Tim—

It only works with WSJ Articles at the moment it seems.

wayne—

Please don’t. Let me write my notes in peace. Let me decide if I have all the information I need. At least let me opt-out.

Enrico—

@wayne: just turn it off in your settings. I love context, because it lets me connect to notes I have written on a similar topic quickly and adds interesting content to my research. Since I am a German user, I hope that at least WSJ will provide content via their German branch very soon and that other interesting providers such as National Geographics, wired magazine and ten Magazine will jump the wagon soon.

Vega—

I’ve tried turning it off, it shows as off in my settings, but still these damned annoying notes keep popping up. I hate it. I don’t care what evernote or wsj thinks I should be reading. If it was an option where off works, then fine, but it doesn’t.

Ronda Scott—

Vega, you may be seeing cached articles. They should only last for up to 24 hours after they first appeared in a particular note, after which you should no longer see them. After you’ve selected “OFF” for the Context feature, no new notes created will show related articles or people.

Vega—

Sadly, no… I’ve written several new notes since turning context to off and they all have context ads at the bottoms (because let’s be clear here, that’s what these are, targeted ads)

Vega—

No, they are still appearing even on new notes.

Twelvemonkeys—

Ditto. Annoying, distracting.

Feature-porn for bored developers.

Turning it off.

Please don’t add new features by default. That is the privilege of Facebook.

Sean—

v nice way of putting it.

+1

Come on guys, please employ (or listen to!) some good UX people when developing / releasing new features

Alex—

Will it be available for the web version?

nico—

No on windows or android app?

Jan Scott—

When do I get my refund as my Premium membership consistently fails to give me many premium features? Bring in two tier pricing for NON Apple users. Or stop this lie that this is a premium feature.

Harry—

Do not see it on my IPad. And I am premium. Any idea on how to activate this, as it looks pretty cool to me.

Benjamin—

I actually put in a ticket about this the other day (and I should say that tech support answered it very quickly… thank you). I love this idea. But I think there might be something wrong with the implementation. Now that Context is there, I don’t see the same referenced notes (from my own notebooks) that I used to see. I checked my settings and that’s not the problem. It seems like ‘Related Notes’ just aren’t working as well as it used to work. Having said that, I think this feature is a great idea and very much ‘on track’ to be a wonderful addition to the program/service.

Jim Signorelli—

Doesn’t seem to be working on my MBP. I have premium and
checked all the sources, but nothing pops up. What do I need to do?

Aaron—

Yeah me too…
I just watched the video, nothing like that has ever happened in Evernote on any of my Macs, even the one running the beta build. I’ve got everything checked and am a premium subscriber… so… is this just another case of Evernote releasing something that simply doesn’t work or am I doing something wrong?

Purrple—

Nice addition, but it would be nice to have an option to disactivate it selectively for some notes or notebooks.

Luis—

I am a premium user and still do not see it available to me on any of my platforms including iPhone.

Arby's Mom—

We’ll, this just sold me to NOT upgrade to Premium. Based on the comments here, I’d hate Context. I was on the fence until I read this article. Now? No way.

Peter Samuel Kennedy—

From the comments, it sounds like this ‘addition’ is intrusive and full of bugs. No thanks.

Kurtos—

Upgraded Evernote desktop on Windows 7 when prompted and was intrigued by the new Context feature. Lo and behold, now Evernote is incredibly unstable.

The little Context pop-ups appear every time I make a change to a note and I made the silly mistake of clicking it and it froze. I try to sync and Evernote freezes. I click a Context suggestion and Evernote crashes. I try to create a new note and Evernote crashes.

Dear Evernote, please please please focus on making your core product more stable! I am a Premium subscriber (have been for a while and currently paid up until 2018!) but using Evernote on a Windows computer is a painfully awful experience. Not everyone has a Mac! When will Windows users get a UI that is vaguely modern? I’ve resorted to using the new website, which is lovely, but not suitable as I don’t always have Internet access!

Rant over!

Joe—

I hate this Context thing. I’ve spent too much time trying to find out how to turn it off and cannot find a solution. Additionally, I read there may be privacy issues involved: http://goo.gl/gK1K3G

Taylor Pipes—

Joe, if you prefer to disable Context, you can do so from your Preferences. Learn more: https://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/104102093

With regards to any other issues, we have outlined them in a special blog post: https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2014/12/04/questions-answers-context-2/

Claire—

I have Evernote on my PC at work and just started getting the random context popups the other day and it is by far the most annoying thing I’ve experienced so far in 2015. I also can’t figure out how to turn it off. I’ve looked for this mysterious “preferences” everywhere but I’m convinced it doesn’t exist. I used to love Evernote, but context is so incredibly distracting that it’s ruining my view of this stupid thing that used to be awesome.

Also – I tried asking for help. Nothing.

Customer service anyone?

Taylor Pipes—

Hello Claire, You go to Evernote > Options > Context tab:
Uncheck “Show Context” or the sources you don’t want. Here is a screenshot of what that looks like:
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s197/sh/ee57bbb0-cfbb-4cb5-85c5-1a938ae02500/4d94068ec1dfb0a3147ee5518d50890a

empalandri—

I have Evernote (non Premium) Windows version 5.8.1.6061 (274061) Public. I hate the context feature which is inhibiting my ability to edit notes.

The Context feature is enabled in my version but the tab in Evernote>Tools>Options does not appear so I cannot disable it. The Options panel is exactly as it appears in the screen shot except that the “Context” tab is not there. Any suggestions?

Peter J. Bury—

It is wrong to send a general email entitled as above, which then only after downloading from the link turns out to apply only to those of us on Apple products.
This is really a mistake. Improve please!

Peter in Italy

Joshua S Johnsob—

I noticed this article mentioned Mac, iPhone, and iPad. As an iPhone user who has migrated to the Android platform I would really love to see equal development in that area.

Gomes—

The context adds a lot to the notes. It gives an option to the more knowledge and helps expand the possibilities to solve some problems. Congratulation!